Understanding the affordances of navigation metaphors in a collaborative virtual environment

When designing a collaborative virtual environment (CVE) one important decision is to identify the right interaction technique to be used. This paper takes the position that the interaction techniques used in a CVE have an effect on user’s collaborative experience. Paper investigates the effect of three 3D navigation techniques on user’s experience when interacting in a CVE. We report the affordances of navigation techniques using different aspects of user’s experience such as awareness, perception of collaborative effort, presence and satisfaction. 40 subjects were grouped in pairs of two users to perform a collaborative navigation task. Our results show that giving the user’s a direct control of their actions influences positively their copresence and awareness. A direct visual feedback of the partner’s point of view is beneficial for the copresence and the awareness. Finally, the space reference and the orientation in the virtual environment (VE) have an impact on the user involvement. These results provide an initial set of guidelines for the design of collaborative virtual environments